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THEY GATHER
ABOUT
BRIDGET FISKE & JOSEPH LAU with STELIOS MANOUSAKIS & STEPHANIE PAN and COLLABORATING PERFORMERS
Responding to shared and personal need, crisis, and underbellies of now, ‘They Gather’ creates gatherings: in vulnerability, in celebration, to be heard, and to find meaning.
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Blending visceral and sensitive movement with original soundscapes and voice, 'They Gather' asks us to engage with each other, our environment and our humanity.
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‘They Gather’ was developed through observations formed across 20 years of socially and politically engaged artistic practice, ideas and reflections on the relationship between the individual and the collective, and being inspired by Nonviolent Communication and the feminist philosophy “the personal is political”.
“They Gather...has the potential to encapsulate global politics and humanity's empathy in intimate and bespoke site activations, in theatre performances and community engagement programs. The work places people at its core coupled with an exquisite immersive soundscape. It is visually stunning and an important contribution to the cannon of performance art”
- Kate Usher, Festival Director, Supercell Festival Of Contemporary Dance -
MODULES
‘They Gather' is an international multimodal and interdisciplinary project creating ‘gatherings’ of people, action, dance, sound, and music.
These interrelated performances explore the boundaries between audience, participant, and performer in public, festival and cultural spaces subsequently creating dialogue with environments, societies, politics, and histories and creating speculative futurologies. 'They Gather' aims to empower and create dialogue around the complexities and polarities of contemporary living.
An Absurdist Archive of Isolation: a full body workout radio play
An immersive sound and participatory movement experience.
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This first-person performance/radio play is a genre-blurring 26-minute trip offering a deep dive into our relationship with time and the freedom of isolation.
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The piece unfolds and transforms your domestic environment through music, text and your movement, turning it into the setting of a multisensory experience.
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The narrator guides you through a sensory choreographic journey, plunging into contemporary storytelling and podcast wormholes while soaring past an eclectic mix of dramatic song, techno, musique concrète, raggacore, field recordings / soundwalks, indie pop and ambient music.
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There will be time to move with fury, fall into the softness of cushions, and collapse into the folds of time. It is all as you choose.
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‘An Absurdist Archive of Isolation: a full body workout radio play’ is a work to listen to and a work to read, both to do.
Presented to date:
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The Lowry (#LoveLowry, UK)
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The Place & Chisenhale Dance’s 'How Do We Tune Into Sensation?' festival (UK)
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Modern Body Laboratory (NL)
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Rewire international electronic music festival on-line edition (NL)
Everyday Freedoms
A durational work that looks at our need for freedom and where, when and how this exists and is expressed.
Engaging deliberate & incidental audiences in public spaces, 'Everyday Freedoms' proposes states of being while questioning ideas about value, systems, and freedoms. It is an exploration of physical and intangible containment, of boundaries between collective responsibility and the individual as well as shifting needs.
"I could have watched variations and developments within the entire work all day - for hours"
- ‘Everyday Freedoms’ audience member -
Presented to date: Supercell Festival of Contemporary Dance, Meeanjin/Brisbane, Australia, 2019.
Photographers: Sammie Williams, Bridget Fiske, and CreativeImageWorx (Eeamon Sweeney)
Corpus Alimentation
Part documentary, part science fiction, part ritual: audience gather for an immersive experience of electronic sounds, contemporary vocals and evocative dance.
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How to survive a falling lift, a mother’s story of her newborn’s urgency to feed, how to repot a plant and an account of the person who survived the greatest free fall in history all become metaphors for a state of emergency.
Vulnerabilities, scarcity and survival provide potent threads for being with the physiological needs that drive reactions to flock, to protect, to shelter, of fight or flight.
"The monologue about breastfeeding...delivered into a microphone suspended from the ceiling ...created a visceral response to the difficulties of the political topics being presented in the work..."
- ‘Corpus Alimentation’ audience member -
Presented to date: Supercell Festival of Contemporary Dance, Meeanjin/Brisbane, Australia, 2019.
Photographers: Nadia Milford, and Eammon Sweeney - CreativeImageWorx
Lost In Feeling
A mass public participation work for audience, community and artists exploring our need to connect to others, to be seen and to be heard, 'Lost In Feeling' re-imagines being in a large gathering (e.g. a demonstration, a celebration) where the self is both lost within and empowered by being part of a mass gathering.
Occupying public space with bodies, sound and the use of localised FM radio networks, the choreography emerges through a performed score that instigates and investigates swarm behaviours through embodied algorithmic thinking.
This work is adapted and reimagined through creative
community consultation workshops leading up to the event.
These community members inform the score performed, but
also become key performers / facilitators in the work.
"Feeling very valued and supported...not feeling the need to censor my response to any of the tasks."
- ‘Lost In Feeling' community collaborators -
Presented to date: Supercell Festival of Contemporary Dance, Meeanjin/Brisbane, Australia, 2019.